Researchers in China and the United States have identified mutations of two genes which appear to make ethnic Chinese more susceptible to lung cancer, they wrote in the journal Cancer.
Their finding involves two genes, ABCB1 and ABCC1, which were previously thought to be linked to eliminating carcinogens from the lungs and protecting them against inhaled toxins.
"The investigators found that certain (gene) variants were found much more often in individuals with lung cancer than in cancer-free controls," they wrote in a statement.
Another study published in the Lancet in October predicted that China would see 65 million deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and 18 million deaths from lung cancer between 2003 and 2033 from smoking and biomass burning at home. ~ Reuters, 22 Dec. 2008
China is a smoking country. There are 350 million smokers in China today, and they make up 1/3rd of all the smokers in the world. And even with news and discoveries like the one above, convincing smokers to quit remains a big challenge and a problem.
